Chapter Seventeen
Out of the bus, she trudged back home in early evening through the marshland of the melted snow that was refreezing treacherously. Then she detoured a block west from the trailer park to the apartment complex where Rita/Lily resided. Gabriele heard popular music playing in Lily's apartment. She knocked.
"Uh…just a second," said Lily. Gabriele heard the movement of papers and magazines being suddenly assorted and things being scooted.
"Who is it?"
"It's me. I don't give a flying f— what your apartment looks like!"
"G-a-b-r-i-e-l-e!" Lily said the name like music. "Please wait a minute, please," she said with childish delicacy.
For a few minutes Gabriele waited and listened to the rustling. During a minute of that time she was interested because the rustling was the rustling of a mind, and the mind was interesting indeed. "I'm leaving, Lily. In the bus you dropped one of your gloves from a pocket in your coat. I'm leaving it right here." The radio music suddenly changed to classical music with a National Public Radio DJ. Gabriele waited a couple more minutes. "Goodbye," said Gabriele.
"Oh. I'll come over and get them." Gabriele did not know what that meant. She heard the unlocking of the door bedizen with many bolts. The door opened. Gabriele handed her the glove without eye contact and turned away. "I'm working," she said coldly.
"Thanks so much. Thank you, Gabriele…well I could fix you some coffee if you'd come in…well, I'll — " Gabriele was already walking away and did not, by choice, register the rest except for that redundant word, "please." The word was projected in such a melancholic and extinguished tone that it caused her German heart to thaw for human suffering. After descending a couple flights of stairs she paused, thought, and then returned to the apartment. She knocked on the door and Lily opened it while trembling and in tears.
"Are you okay?" asked Gabriele.
"I'm nutty. Don't hate me. Please don't hate me."
"I don't."
"Everybody turns away from me. Why wouldn't they? I wash the same plate over and over again for an hour. I just want to not be hated. I just need a friend. I'm so scared like I'm falling in a dark pit and no one cares about me." Gabriele knew. The dark pit was the anxiety of cognizant man who knew of imminent death. It was an anxiety exuding into the bleeding of loneliness and only interaction with others repressed that anxiety. That was for normal people. For those others who did not fit easily into normality or categories of abnormality and who could not capture or claim the illusion of self the loneliness was all the more inexorable.
"I haven't turned away," said Gabriele. Lily hugged her clingingly. Gabriele, not knowing how to really touch her, patted her on the back. She felt as if her body were being traversed by a colony of ants; and yet as repugnant as it felt being hugged in such a way, she kept this feeling enclosed deep in her inner self for the purpose of going beyond it and perhaps illustrating some sense of human kindness. "When you do obsessive acts it isn't exactly nutty. You are trying to seek order in past trauma. It's okay. It will be okay."
Gabriele let her sob on her back until the catharsis was complete. She then looked at her once again and a restoration of manic energy was taking place. Still bleak and baggy from tears, Rita/Lily began to smile. Gabriele thought about how vulnerable the human condition was. Rita/Lily was an extreme case but the vulnerability was ubiquitous in the species. She knew that it stretched in a diminutive way even into her self. "And you know something," said Gabriele. "You are probably the only person in New York State to have germless plates. Yours also have an extra coating of soap on them to kill any forthcoming germs that might land upon them. That's good especially with Saddam Hussein on the loose. Visitors won't mind eating with you at all." Lily released her grasp of Gabriele's figure and laughed manically.
"Sit down, sit down my good friend," said Lily. "Let me hold the baby." Gabriele released him from the pouch and held him. "No, I've got him." She sat down. She did not trust her friendly acquaintance holding the baby. Also, she disliked those eyes, which were like those of her aunt: eyes of needing to be a mommy. A responsibility toward any child was to raise him or her to be a good and independent creature. Motherhood wasn't for gaining a purpose in life nor for having adoring beings who would bring one a lifetime of "love" as well as a crutch to get through life's lonely void. Real love, if it were possible, should not be self-serving. No sooner had she thought this than Rita/Lily said, "I wish I had a baby."
"Believe me, they aren't toys. If they were toys I would have returned this one months ago and gotten my money back. They are needy human beings. They are a lot of thankless hard work and believe me you don't want one. If you think you are nutty now, a baby would make shambles out of your biochemistry and throw you off the deep end if being in love with a man didn't do it. Besides, this one is too temperamental."
"He looks angry now, doesn't he? I've never seen an angry baby before."
"Huh…good observation. I've been thinking the same thing. I had never seen an angry baby until I had this one. He was yelling so horribly in the WICCA service that I had to gag him with a pacifier. He keeps spitting out this thing like a missile. Who can blame him? I often do the same thing myself." She knew that in reality a baby couldn't be angry for to have anger one needed a self. Since self was the product of thought and thought was the product of language her creature could not be angry per se. He was feeling discomfort. That was true. But there wasn't a possibility of Adagio thinking of himself as a bona fide individual that was distinct from other selves nor was it possible for him to hate outside forces for the indignities they caused him (although it was she who changed the diapers so she wasn't sure what indignities there could be). Still, it was indisputable that he appeared to be angry.
She thought of her Aunt Peggy revolving pathetically around all the self-centered members of her family like the Viking orbiter. Peggy had even orbited around Gabriele's parents gregariously. Gabriele had been excluded from that whole bunch. With the exception of Peggy to some limited degree, she had been banished to the companionship of her books and to learn of greatness away from their commotion. In childhood and adolescence she kept the invisible pacifier in her mouth. Then she went away and when she rarely returned on brief visits she was as obdurate as a Nazi. Her rebellion had not been a disgorging of the pacifier, like Nathaniel, but a subtle insurrection that would not cause Peggy's tears. She was partial to calculated and unemotional reactions. They were less theatrical. Their performances had more reality and substance. Also, such planned and subtle rebellions never brought emotional counterattacks to make one feel guilty. Now that she was a Mommy herself, orbiting her life around her own beloved, they could not accuse her of abandoning family. Photographs of Nathaniel sent in the mail once every few weeks seemed to be enough to get them off her back.
"Hello, little Nathaniel. Maybe he understands us and knows we are talking about him. Do you think so? Do you think that could be making him angry?"
"Be careful. He's got a tooth now. You don't want him to bite you. Did you eat anything nutritious earlier?"
"Of course."
"No Ramen noodles this time?"
"No. A salad-a wonderful nutritious salad and some nice nutritious lithium. Like you're always saying, I need to keep away from chocolate and…what do you call them…oh, yeah, carbohydrates. And there are those bad cholesterols too. You are smart. Like you say, you keep me from bouncing off of the walls. That's what you always tell me. 'Sit down and don't bounce off of the walls, kid. I've already got one bouncing baby. I don't need a second.'" She gagged her mouth with her hand and then disgorged her laughter.
"Okay, okay. No more mocking of me," said Gabriele with a bashful smile.
"Yes, I did what you told me to do, Gabriele. I had a salad." Her voice leapt like a spark of electricity on a coil. "I followed your directions. I always follow your directions. You are my good friend-my best friend. I always want to follow your directions." Suddenly it dragged in a moment of unpleasant thoughts. "But when I ate it I was first thinking about you. I was thinking that maybe you didn't like me. I mean, you sent me away. You didn't want me to go with you." Gabriele frowned. She felt bored and she didn't want to rehash this petty incident. She wanted to go back home. "You've got good reasons. It doesn't matter. And since I came back I've been thinking about all the different things you can see God in. Do you remember? You told me to do that for you. I'm still working on it."
"Gee, thanks," said Gabriele indifferently. "Well, gotta go."
"Please wait. Here's what I want to tell you. You'll like hearing this." She knew that to some degree she needed to interest Gabriele in order to have her compassion. She feigned a smile but from her manic energy it changed and became real. Anecdotes were ready to disgorge from her mouth. "When I was eating the nutritious salad I started to feel lonely. You know how lonely I can get with my head thumpin' at thinking what my grandfather did to me all drunk and pressing against me like he often did — so I tried to call Gary-you know the guy in the orange trailer — but there was no answer. I wanted to tell him I was sorry about everything that happened this morning — Oh, you do not know what happened this morning. You've gotta hear what happened this morning! I wanted to say I was sorry but I wasn't sorry, you know, because what happened was so funny and it was just like a blessing because I prayed for it, you know. I prayed for this type of a thing and then it happened. You don't know what happened this morning-Oh, you've got to hear it. Do you want to hear everything?" She began an ongoing laughter as she narrated her anecdote, pausing in certain moments to release her manic chortles. "He came by this morning-you should have seen him-'Rita, my darling,' he said-and I said, 'Rita's not home. Lily is here so maybe you should come back when Rita returns.' 'When will she return?' 'Next year,' I told him. I told him next year. I guess I was playing with him…what do you say…flirting — I don't know. Maybe it was a little naughty, but men like that sort of thing, don't you think so Gabriele? I said, 'She's starting up a cosmetic company in Africa.' He said, 'Oh, that's too long to wait. I like both of you. You're both Italian sweeties.' So then I invited him in. He kicked off his shoes, rubbing his feet together like he was trying to make fire, wiggling toes on the footstool. Those feet were so cute in his white socks so dirty on the soles of his feet. I guess that sounds strange, doesn't it — thinking a man's dirty socks were beautiful, but they were. I think so. Maybe I'm crazy, but I was thinking so then-his dirty souls. Do you think so, Gabriele. Then he said something like, "Before long, I'm gonna actually believe there's a second girl. You've got that influence over me, you know. Africa?" he laughed like someone who doesn't believe something somebody says. I told him that I guessed that they needed cosmetics in Africa. He said that he was sure they did. "Which country," he asked. "Timbuktu," I said. "Is that so?," he said. He was playing with me. "Too bad I never get to see both of you at the same time. Nothing better for a man than boobsy twins." I fixed him breakfast and when we were eating some pancakes —- actually black round things because I burnt them but he ate them like they were still pancakes — he was lookin' at my boobs. 'What big boobs you have,' he said. 'Each one jiggles independently like two girls talking and dancing at a disco. They seem to be talking to me.' 'Don't look at them. It makes me nervous,' I said. 'How can I not?' he said. 'Look at my face when you talk. Not down there or I'll think you are a dirty boy' 'I am,' he said. I said to him that he was like the soles of his feet. "You are like the soles of your feet. You have dirty souls.' Then he persuaded me to take off my shirt so that he could hear them better. He wanted to pull off my bra but I wouldn't allow him to do it - - not at the kitchen table, not anywhere ever. He said that we could be more private in the bedroom and I said no. 'Come on, sweetie,' he said. I did want to kiss him-I've done that before…just that, a little. I didn't want to get caught kissing or being without a shirt and near a man. And he kept on saying, 'Come on, sweetie." So I went back there with him but only after he agreed that we would just kiss. Anyhow, in the bedroom he stripped into his underpants. I was so scared and I kept telling him, 'No, No, I don't want that. We can just kiss' but his fingers kept going up there and down there but never around me in a nice way. Then we heard the door open and I knew it was one of the Semi- independent counselors so I had to hide him in the closet. The counselor stayed for over an hour and when I opened up the closet there he was with a round wet patch on his underwear. He'd peed his underwear. I laughed and pointed at his hole."
"I hope you told him that with a hole he was now the woman," Gabriele interjected. Rita began laughing so hard that she choked on her saliva. "You know, all of us have to be cautious — not just with men and sex (both of which are confusing and should be off limits TO YOU) but everything and everybody. You have to realize that in everything people use each other even though it isn't altogether bad. Think of it this way: if they don't use each other they would have no use of them. You just need to define if that person's use in yourself is your use in him, her, them, whatever. If they are the same, a relationship can ensue. That's my idea."
"Oh, you're so smart. I wish I was smart like that. Do you need to use me?" asked Rita/Lily with hopeful childish innocence.
Gabriele could not think of a use for her. Simple compassion had plagued her here. She wanted to be home "Sure," she lied. "Something like that. Of course you are one of my few friendly people." She looked at her watch. "My customer will come in another hour, Lilian." Names shifted like tectonic plates. "I really should leave and put Adagio to bed." She knew that Rita was still wondering to herself why Gabriele did not teach her these German shoulder massage and acupuncture techniques so that she could have her own customers. She knew that Rita yearned for a vocation and a bit of pocket money. Rita/Lily's thoughts could be read easily from her eyes. She was so ingenuous and without guile or calculation except when men made her nervous. It was for this that Gabriele actually liked her.
Rita picked up the pacifier that had just flown out of the screaming child and handed it to Gabriele. "I'll make some hot coffee before you and Baby Nathaniel go out into the cold."
"Oh, all right," said Gabriele. She was not capitulating to outside pressure but only to the sense that she could not entirely part from the discomfort of compassion, which was the only good trait of man outside his creativity and intelligence. Compassion was half rational. The rest of its composition was that other version of love, the highest of all primordial feelings. Compassion, according to Gabriele, "flared up at the damnedest of times," and as inconvenient as it was to have it, she knew better than to forsake it. She had her distasteful coffee in a soapy cup, and once it was drunk she was pleased that by her compassionate act she had made herself into a better creature; but she knew that enough was enough. She needed to treat herself to compassion by "getting out of Dodge".
In the trailer she took a shower to prepare herself for relieving a customer; finished her session with him; laughed uncontrollably at his angry grievance over the fact that in zipping up his pants with one hand and reaching the other hand over to play with the little boy's fingers, the baby had bit him; and then she had another shower. In the second shower she kept remembering his words, "You'd better put that kid ina cage if you want any men to step over'ere. I'd better get me a tetanus shot." Her own laughter was so inordinate that it soon gave her a headache. After swallowing some aspirin, she began her other job. She preferred making a living on weekends to the rest of the week since it was so much shorter. Outside a little physical prostitution, on weekends she would freelance her "bull shit sketches"(her "mental prostitution) that went with the little "asinine" sentiments that Hallmark Greeting Cards sent to her; and then the week's work would be, for the most part, over. At least she terminated the workweek after Sunday. She loathed "prostituting" herself "to assholes" but the way she looked at it, everything was a form of prostitution from the time that one washed and blow-dried her hair that was cut in such a way that was aesthetically pleasing to "Western farts controlling economic institutions" to rolls that bound human thoughts in its limited pages, the social interaction one engaged in to stay sane, and the tricks one did to get one's little bowl of Alpo dog food. It was her belief that physical prostitution was less of a deleterious moral injustice to oneself than any other kind. Done with a condom, its physical discomfort was also fairly safe and brief. Done enough times with strangers one did not care for, it serendipitously shaped her into a regular Buddha reducing her desires and appetites.
She cut the list of maudlin mottoes into myriad strips; put paper clips around each strip, and then attached each one around a tarot card. She lit the four or five candles that were on the kitchen table; shuffled the deck; drank four cans of beer quickly; and then mumbled a bitching mumble about having to prostitute herself. With her visual perception more mobile and her brain in a buzz, she unevenly laid out the whole of this partial motto-mottled deck in a larger than Celtic layout beginning with the cards patterned out as a cross; meditated on each motto; and then drew her designs. The first motto that she encountered was "Happy Birthday To A Grandson Who Has A Wonderful Personality, Good Looks And A Fine Character. I Guess There Are Some Things That Are Just Hereditary." Suddenly an image flashed through her mind and she began to draw. For a moment she was completely stunned by what she was drawing, and completely incredulous that this was coming from her mind.
As she became aware of bearing this unique, full, and outrageous creation so effortlessly, she fell into hysterical laughter at the sketch of an old woman in a party hat, who smiles on sweetly as her grandson, abandoning all of the packages surrounding him, lifts her skirt curiously. But then for the non-pornographic version she made a young man with a girlfriend bound hand-in-hand and a second hand reaching out to his grandmother who stands near the birthday cake. By drawing this second version she was providing Hallmark with sentimental froth for those who did not see that humans were replaceable in one's own life and that the whole of a life, itself, was more froth splashed up in the washing of time. On a deeper albeit subliminal level she was stating that one could go forward in time and still retain childish affections. She knew it was not so. Only minds like Parmenides and Plato (a mind that she had) could conceptualize changeless eternity within the entity. Such unique individuals did not need to reminisce about the past. She never kept a photograph album apart from her corpus of sketches. She didn't want to be one of the masses. They were like school children trying to find their loose-leaf homework that had been taken from their hands by the winds and scattered behind them.
After she picked up the twentieth Tarot card to begin another preliminary sketch, she became aware of the fact that the flickering candles were making her extremely tired. She knew that being tired all the time was more from the monotony of being a single parent and had little to do with a full night of prostitution that she hadn't even yet begun to complete. For a moment she blamed a woman's susceptibility to become a mother for her blas? existence but it had been her choice to remain pregnant and it was her choice to raise this being whom she could have easily given away for adoption. Likewise, it was her choice to not seek employment. She had striven for isolation; but she hadn't done it with absolute perfection. She had given birth to a child and driven him into her shadows although she might have done it all alone. She knew that she had that capacity. Human society was for her a boring fair ground with the same quick-thrill rides and the same clones in freak shows. The war of the "Kuwaiti theatre" and Saddam Hussein were freak shows that Americans entertained themselves with from their television shows. These freak shows bored and sickened her and yet she listened to war broadcasts from her radio with the gluttony of other news junkies. She liked radio. She could imagine news more accurately without the visual images.
Apart from what important minds could vaguely construe to be permanent truth, human society was bereft of ontological meaning; the West was on a collision path with the environment and Islamic extremists; more and more societies possessed weapons of mass destruction that had the potential force that was beyond her imagination to conceive; and all societies were full of lies and manipulating fables disguised as truths-their own Moseses parting their own Red Seas. To be God's appointed bully of world events and His proponent of capitalism and democratic tyranny was the American myth. She often asked herself how she could even take on a janitorial job and sweep away the dirt of a capitalistic institution. How could she do functions that would keep it nice and operative looking? How could she empty its trash, and change its burnt out light bulbs when that institution was one of a billion which would bring about the destruction of the environment, the vitiation of curiosity and innovation among pampered capitalists, and often exploited third world workers. How could she contribute to society when she did not believe in it?
The telephone rang. "Hello, Lily"
"Rita speaking. How did you know it was me?"
"I'm a supersensory," said Gabriele.
"What is that?"
"I'm a psychic-witch, Rita."
"Really? Witching allows you to know who is on the phone?"
"I'm just joking."
"Oh. Am I disturbing you?"
" No, actually I was wanting something to keep me from falling asleep. What can
I do for you?"
"Gary called. He wants to see me tonight"
"It is nearly 10. You aren't supposed to have visitors after 10. Isn't that what those group home counselors of yours tell you?"
"He wants me to go to the convenience store and talk to him. He wants to meet me now. I told him I was in another call and that I'd call him at the number on his pay phone booth. I don't know what to say to him."
"I think you want to see him, don't you?"
"I want and I don't want."
"So you want to stop wanting to see him."
"Right. What do I do?"
"I don't know. He'll only look as he does for a short period of years. If you really want to not want a man picture him in what will be his permanent state-the broken skeleton of another hundred and fifty years. That always works for me."
"Oh, thank you, Gabriele."
"Sure, Lily —- Rita/Lily. Bye now." She hung up the telephone and turned on the radio to keep herself awake. As she was listening to the classical music of Gabrieli's Canzoni and her own internal voice gabrieleishly, she left the table and began to warm the bottle containing the baby's formula. She fixed herself a large salad. She ate it and a piece of cold leftover pizza while feeding the baby the bottle of milk. As she was doing this she heard the news announcement of Saddam Hussein deliberately flooding the gulf with oil and igniting some of the Kuwaiti oil fields. Her mind was filled with the painful images of a whole ecosystem made into black and tarred corpses. She put her hand over her mouth and ran into the bathroom. She felt like vomiting and attempted to do so but nothing came up. It was nothing but heartburn from the pizza. She sat down and stayed emotionless in her director's chair until the heartburn subsided. And once it had she fell asleep.
She dreamt of her Aunt Peggy. In the dream Peggy and Gabriele stepped inside a grocery store. Both were wearing oxygen masks. All the visible items of the store that were on the shelves were locked away behind glass. All of the cashiers, grocery stockmen, and other personnel were dead at their stations. Gabriele was around the age of five. She hid her face in Peggy's dragging skirt.
"That's no way for a young lady to act," said Peggy as she reached over to the shelves, and conducting pantomime, bent her hand as if it were grasping an item, and then put it into a non-existent cart. She was trying to save money by purchasing invisible items. Stinginess was what had made them rich all of these years. "What is wrong with you?" condemned the aunt. Gabriele pulled away from her, once again realizing that only in reticent and hardened expressions would her inner sensitivities be fortified from the real world. Looking at her aunt's hardened expressions toward death that abounded everywhere she realized that she should not expect anything new and kind in the state of Kansas. After all, humans were adaptive animals. The world was survival of the fittest, and man surviving within the perils of his environment. Why should society be structured differently? Why should being in Kansas under the auspices of an aunt be different? She glanced down at the corpses at her feet unflinchingly and then over to where Peggy was supposedly picking up vegetables and fruit. She could see decapitated Turkish heads locked away behind glass. They were on the refrigerated shelf where the cantaloupes should have been. The more she looked at the Turkish heads the less impact they made upon her. They were no different than any other form of food.
"They are always locking up the cantaloupe. I don't know why they do that," complained the aunt. They moved toward where the pastry section should have been.
The aunt used gestures as if she were putting a large cake into an invisible cart. "They don't seem to have a chocolate cake with vanilla icing. It is vanilla and vanilla or chocolate and chocolate. Now, you remember that no one is to eat any of this cake until the dinner guests have not only arrived but have finished eating their dinner and any business conversation is completed. Some important people have scheduled a meeting with your uncle so they'll be at your birthday party. To wine and dine them, as our family should, is very little to do when they can help bring more business to your uncle. Don't pout over your friends not being allowed to come. Your uncle wouldn't have much luck with business if children were tearing through the place. No pouting about the fact that we can't find a chocolate cake with vanilla icing either. Cakes like this don't have any taste so I can't see how you'd know the difference if it hadn't been for you shopping with me now."
After they walked around the store using gestures of picking up items, they walked up to the cash register. Gabriele thought, "They're dead!" but she remained taciturn. Peggy put the invisible items on the belt of the counter that remained still. Peggy tilted up her chin toward nothing and smiled affectedly as if she were responding to a nonexistent cashier. "I'm very well. Thank you," said Peggy. Then her face tilted back toward the invisible items and the smile deadened. Gabriele felt the slapping of her back. Peggy put her mouth toward Gabriele's ear. She whispered, "Stand up straight. I don't want you to look like one of them" (meaning the cashier that was supposedly ringing up the purchases although her corpse was obviously rotting on the floor with maggots swarming in and out of it.
"Give me that candy bar," scolded Peggy. Gabriele looked at her right hand. It was curled with the fingers almost touching as if she had a candy bar in her hand. "You thought you would put a smart one on me. Hide it behind the laundry soap when I'm not looking. Nothing gets by me."
On their way home through the empty streets they quickly arrived at their neighborhood when suddenly Peggy honked on a horn and slammed on the brakes-ding-dong. A young Korean boy and his sister were on the road. Ding-dong. The girl had run in front of the car in an attempt to get the ball that her brother had overthrown. It was too late. The car slammed against her body. Peggy Peggy Ding-dong Peggy Ding-dong.
Gabriele woke to the sound of the doorbell. At first her mind tried to grasp a concrete image that could go with the sound. Then she knew it, and the cause of it. "Shit!" she said out loud. Now did she once again have to prostitute herself in the physical domain with some stranger at the door? She didn't want to work. People worked for money and they worked to escape the void. They abhorred the void that they would fall into if engaged in inaction. There were times that doing nothing did nothing for her either. There were days when she was a little lost in her lack of valid employment. But more times than not being completely paralyzed on what she needed to do or would like to do with her day was advantageous. Doing nothing but sitting in her living room staring up at the walls and letting the void overtake her made her all the wiser. She seemed to be unlike the rest of humanity who had to desperately see someone or go somewhere to escape slipping into themselves.
She did not want to see her clients any more than she wanted to return to work as a staff psychologist in a high security prison on the outskirts of Ithaca-a good job that she had taken upon graduating from Rice University and had brought her here. Eight months doing that had been enough. Eight weeks in a following job as an assistant director of a girl's home babysitting "women creatures" who, gaining their freedom at the age of 18 perpetuate the "classless undergrowth of society" had been worse than the prisoners. Girls and prisoners were often like comparing rotten apples and rotten oranges. There were times when she thought that the prisoners had been worse. Their sexual man-on-the-make innuendos had often frustrated parole assessments. In contrast, eight weekends with her clients (give or take a weekend) was a lesser prostitution. By the fifth ringing of the doorbell she decided to answer it so that it would stop ringing.
Two of them stood there: men. She knew she had an appointment with one client, but here were two of them. She gave a seductive smile and then informed them that she would only allow one of them at a time into her domain. The other would have to wait in the vehicle until his buddy came out. As one of them came in she thought to herself that she was really performing an important social function. Being a prison psychologist or a girl's group home supervisor had been paperwork jobs. The positions had not helped anyone. Here, at a discount since she was not beautiful, she relieved men of aggressive tendencies and stress. They were less likely to beat up on their wives or open fire in a McDonald's Restaurant as a consequence. She even argued to herself that by her service she was a bit like the Buddha who claimed that one should take the middle of the road. To her, that was the Buddha's tacit endorsement that a little bit of prostitution was needed to sustain oneself physically although it should never be taken to excesses.